A cause whose time has come

It is a simple fact that something happened in Britain between 1992 and 2005 that is causing significantly new levels of disengagement with politics, particularly among young people, and that this did not happen to the same degree in comparable countries elsewhere. But what was it that caused the change here? And what can be done to reverse it? These are big, difficult questions. They are also important ones. Britain would be a more unified and perhaps even a happier country if they could be answered and acted on - we would certainly have a better democracy. The Power Commission report published yesterday, chaired by Baroness Kennedy and set up following two successive low turnout general elections, is a serious attempt to address a genuine crisis.

The great strength of the report is that it casts its net wide. It recognises that the decline in political engagement has no unique cause and that therefore the problem requires more than a quick fix. Not even electoral reform, for example, though widely supported and often cited, is a magic bullet for dealing with a problem that is as much to do with the way we live now as with the way we do politics. But the report is clearly right to take a holistic approach, and thus to call for a fresh look at everything from Lords reform to the funding of political parties and greater use of citizens' juries and internet democracy. The weakness of the report, however, is that it tends to blur perceptions and facts. Most people have a very low opinion of politicians in general and of their ethical standards (though they hold their local MP in higher regard). Yet the evidence to support these views is thin. What needs addressing is the culture that leads the public to think in this way, as well as the systemic defects which sometimes make them right.

The report is not, therefore, a uniquely authoritative one. There is much in it that rings true and much that deserves support, but also some things that ring false and some that are dubious. The report takes it as axiomatic that the public, including the young public, would be more politically engaged if the political system was reformed in a number of interesting ways. Thus the most eye-catching proposal in the whole report, for example, the lowering of the voting age to 16, is put forward as a reform which the public supports and that would boost turnout. Inconveniently, both these claims are the opposite of the truth. It is just two years since the Electoral Commission carried out research that found 78% want the voting age to remain at 18 not lowered to 16, with 54% of the 15-19 age group themselves also opposed; that survey concluded that dropping the voting age to 16 would in fact lower, not boost, turnout because so few in the 16-18 category would actually go to the polls. The commission may be right that votes at 16 are a good idea, but the support for it comes from the pressure groups who gave evidence to the inquiry, not from the general public themselves.

In the end, it may not be the detailed recommendations of the report that matter as much as the very positive response it has already drawn from politicians eager to be seen as reformers reaching out to the public. With Gordon Brown setting a hot pace, politicians of all parties are keen to be associated with the cause of modernising and improving Britain's democracy. They are doing so because pro-reform voters - who went to Labour in 1997 but have gone elsewhere and nowhere in subsequent elections - are up for grabs next time round. Politicians who spent much of the last few years being rude about the liberal reforming classes discovered in 2005 that these very voters swing a lot of seats under the first-past-the-post system. If the parties are getting into a bidding war for the support of democratic reformers, this can only be good news. Whatever the weaknesses of their report, the Power Commission's sense of timing has been impeccable.